Red Sea Moments

The Bible is a book of stories.  It is like a family get-together once the children have grown up, where everyone sits around saying, "Remember when....."   

That is how the collection of stories were finally stitched together.  The stories that stood out in the memories of a family first, then of a tribe, then of a nation were told and re-told.  These were the dramatic and memorable moments --- the moments when they finally realized once and for all that God-is -with-us and that He is faithful to act on our behalf. 

Their faith came not from philosophy, but from experience -- experience so dramatic as never to be forgotten.  When I was about 36, someone asked me who God was to me.  On thinking about it, I said that He was the God of my past; that is, I could look back on my life and see where He had helped me before -- but He was not then the God of my future.  I could not trust Him for the next day, or the next ten years, and I had many fears about the future.  I was afraid of what might come next.

There was a reason why I could not trust God for the future at that point.  One reason was probably that I had not yet had enough adult experience on which to base my trust.  But the second, and most important reason, was that, even though I prayed on a regular basis, I did not remember what God had done for me in the past.  Every moment was a new moment, and the past had no bearing on what might come next. 

At that time, I did not have a biblical viewpoint to guide my thinking.  Looking back now from a biblical perspective, I realize that we were not taught as children to have what is essentially a Jewish mentality:  their faith is wholly based on remembrance of what God had done for them as a family, as a people, as a nation.  Their book is a book of remembrance.

When David went out against Goliath, Saul looked at this youth and said, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth" (I Sam. 17:33).  Now, let me say that that is exactly the way most of us think:  we are realists; we see things "as they are," and we do not want to be "fools" in believing something that is not real.  After all, we have brains for a reason, and eyes in our heads; we can see "what's what!"

David's reply was based not on philosophy, but on reality:  He had had experience, and so he told his story -- what he remembered -- about God's help:

Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.  When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.  When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.  Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.  The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine (I Sam.17:34-37).

David's faith in God's help was based not on something he read or something someone told him, but on his personal experience of God's deliverance of him in that past.  That is the Bible!  That is why these stories were told and re-told, and why "stones of remembrance" were erected all over the land.  That is why we have altars in our churches today -- these are "stones of remembrance" of all that God has done for us.

Today, I would love to gather a group of people for "Rocking Chair Stories" of how and when God had helped them. [More about this tomorrow.] These are the stories on which we can base our faith in the future: moments when our backs were up against the Red Sea and the Egyptian army was bearing down on us with vengeance, moments when a path, an escape route, were suddenly opened to us, and we were delivered after all!  When we recall these moments, our response is "Thank God He.....!"  In other words, our response is always praise, worship, thanksgiving -- this is the praise of a pure heart of gratitude, and it forms the basis of our trust in the future, that God will still be with us when the time comes.

Psalm 106 is too long to introduce here, but it sums up what happens when people forget what God has done for them.  Maybe tomorrow, we'll look at it.  In the meantime, if we can all recall a moment of deliverance from our past, we have something on which to base our faith in the future.

Listening

Why is my language not clear to you?  Because you are unable to hear what I say (Jn. 8:43).

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me (Jn. 10:27).

When Jesus opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, it was not only His compassion for the outcasts that moved Him, nor only to get people's attention, even though He did say, "The miracles I do in My Father's Name speak for Me."  All of God's acts are eternal and on-going; everything Jesus did in His earthly ministry, He is still doing today.

Many of us have struggled for years to read the Bible, but it fails to "speak" to us.  We may even have attended Bible studies given by scholars, and found them interesting, but when the class is over, that is the end of the experience. 

We do not necessarily need to read Scripture to hear the voice of God in our innermost being.  What Scripture does is confirm to us that it was God speaking, and not our own voice.  It is hard to learn to trust that inner voice without having Scripture to confirm it.  But when we have heard God speaking, and then He leads us to a particular verse that we did not even know existed, then and only then do we begin to have confidence that we are hearing God and not ourselves.  The process is a kind of "school of the Holy Spirit."  What is required is that we desire to learn, that we desire to hear, that we pray, "Lord, I want to see You;" "Lord, I want to hear You."  This kind of prayer will not go unanswered.

The blind, the halt, and the lame entered the kingdom of knowing Jesus Christ before the "sleek and the fat" simply because they needed something, because their desire was great -- to be included.  Society had shut them out as literally "unworthy," but Jesus drew them back in, and this time, as the center of attention.  People came to those who were healed, who in their testimony, became attractive and accepted by those who had rejected them in their need.

William Barry, S.J., once said, "Desire is the key element in prayer and in developing a relationship with God....Unless we have some attraction, desire, or curiosity about God, we will not be moved to initiate a relationship with Him. God is trying to make Himself attractive to us, but He won't force a relationship upon us." 

At the Last Supper, Peter said to Jesus, "No,...you shall never wash my feet."  Jesus answered him, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."  I have heard it said that unless we allow God to do something for us, we will never have a relationship with Him. 

Psalm 37 says, Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.

When we first timidly venture to ask for what we most earnestly desire, the Lord seems to go out of His way to minister to us.  Later, as we gain confidence and trust in Him, our desires change: we want more and more of Him.  For some people, the desire is simply to be less afraid of God.  For some, the desire itself is smothered over by addiction, and their desire may be first to be free of the addictions.  Whatever it is, if we suppress our real desire, we will always have a cool relationship with God.  Even if we think He cannot or will not grant our desire, we must present it until we receive His view or answer to our prayer.  As with human relationships, real dialogue with God is what brings miracles.

Jesus is impotent unless He meets someone who wants something from him -- and then we enter a partnership of desires:  "Of course I want to heal you...."

If we cannot hear His Voice today, if we cannot read Scripture today, a good place to begin is with the desire to hear and to see:  Lord, open my eyes and my ears to hear your voice and to see the words of eternal life.

Inspection Tour

Every morning, as soon as it is light enough, I take my coffee to the garden to make what my husband calls "my inspection tour."  It's partly inspection and partly rejoicing to see how things are prospering under my care.  I know each plant by name and characteristics; I know whether each one needs sun, shade, water, or dry environment.  I stop in front of each section of the garden and study what is happening there.  Are weeds threatening new plants?  Is something doing poorly, needing water or a change of setting?  Are buds forming and starting to bloom?

Today, I noticed two gorgeous Asian Lilies blooming for the first time---but the Duranta I had planted them next to last year had grown so much that it overshadowed both lilies so they could not be seen.  Their beauty was unnoticed, hidden under a "bushel basket," so to speak.  So, even though they both seemed to be flourishing where they were, I decided to move them to a more open space where they could be seen and admired.  Once I moved the deep orange lily to the back of the bed, it took my breath away as the morning sun backlighted it, making it shine and glow.  I'm sure the lily had no understanding of my "cruelty" in moving it from its comfortable and shady spot to the open garden, but I knew what I was doing.

I cannot imagine that the Creator and Artificer of Life is any less solicitous and caring about us than I am about my garden.  I am sure that every morning and every evening, He is also doing an "inspection tour" to see how His children are faring.  And there are times when He has to move us out of our comfort zone, as happened in Hurricane Katrina, for example. 

One year after Katrina, a newspaper in Texas conducted a survey of the people who had evacuated New Orleans and re-located in Texas.  They asked two questions:  (1) Are you better off today than you were before Katrina?  and (2) if you could, would you go back to your life before Katrina?   Guess what the results were:  76% of the people surveyed said that they were better off after Katrina and they would not choose their previous life before the storm. 

In the Book of Zephaniah, the Lord says through the prophet:

I will sweep away everything

from the face of the earth...

I will sweep away both men and animals;

I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea...

I will stretch out my hand against Judah

and against all who live in Jerusalem.

I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal,

the names of the pagan and the idolatrous priests---

those who bow down on the housetops

to worship the starry host....

But I will leave within you the meek and the humble,

who trust in the name of the Lord...

They will eat and lie down

and no one will make them afraid....

Do not fear, O Zion;

do not let your hands hang limp.

The Lord your God is with you,

he will quiet you with his love,

he will rejoice over you with singing....

I will give them praise and honor

in every land where they were put to shame.

When the Lord sees weeds multiplying to the extent that they are taking over the land, sometimes, for the sake of the "meek and the humble," He has to "sweep away" everything so that we can start over, as we all had to do after Katrina.  And sometimes, we wonder if He knows what He is doing in moving us about -- but a year later, we can look back and say, "Yes, I am better off now than I was before."  He knows what He is doing; He is the Master Gardener!

Water and Fire

I have one burning desire -- to see my own church re-evangelized with the water of the Word of God and the fire of the Holy Spirit.  I am like Moses in Pharoah's household, watching his own people toil every day under the hot sun, lashed by the whips of their Egyptian slave-masters, and not knowing what to do about it.  I know that Moses had to spend 40 years in the desert, tempering his natural impulses to "set his people free" before he was a fit instrument, humble enough to be used by God at last.

I see good people, lovely people, lovable people who go to church every Sunday, but I wonder if they "know" God, if they "love" God, or if they just "go to church." 

As a child, I learned from the Baltimore catechism that "God made us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this life and to be happy forever with Him in the next."  It took me 35 years to begin to understand what that really meant.  I do believe that all the people around me every Sunday are serving God; I see the love they have for their families, the sacrifices they are making every day for their children and their elderly parents.  And I know in my heart that they will indeed "be happy with Him in heaven."  So what's the problem?

If my own experience is typical, I have to believe that many "good Catholics" who go to church every Sunday are still thirsting for something they do not know.  I was "trying" to be a good person, but I still did not know Jesus Christ and "the power of His resurrection," in the words of Scripture.  And I really did not "know" God enough to "love" Him.  I just wanted to do the right thing, because that was the way I was raised. 

With the annointing (water and fire) of the Holy Spirit, a whole new world opened up to me, beginning with the desire to read Scripture.  For the first time in my life, I began to experience being led by the Spirit and "hearing" the interior Voice of God in my life.  I began "wrestling with God" in prayer and learning to know Him intimately.  It was sooooo different from just 'trying to be good!"  Indeed, for the first time in my life, I was beginning to learn where goodness comes from, and it certainly was not from within me!  I was beginning to see who I really was: a sinner, something I could never have admitted before.  "Being good" was not good enough!  It was only the beginning. 

Those who have studied scripture tell us that the reason Moses could not cross the Jourdan River into the Promised Land is that the law can bring us only to the brink of the eternal life, but it takes Joshua/ Jesus to lead us across the River into the land where we can dwell in safety and peace.  And indeed, John says in his Gospel, The law came through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ...From the fullness of His grace, we have all received one blessing after another. 

Jesus told the woman at the well, "...whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  This is what I yearn for my church to experience -- living water that satisfies every thirst!  I want people to know the Bible in a way that gives peace, assurance, truth, and a true knowledge of who God is!  And that true knowledge of God brings us at last to the true love of God. 

I want my whole church to experience the promise Jesus made to His Apostles as He ascended into heaven:  Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the Gift my Father promised...for John baptized with water, but...you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

During His earthly ministry, Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and what would I but that it be kindled!"  More and more, I desire that both fire and water be rained down from above on the Catholic church, in a new Pentecost!  I want to see rivers of living water flowing throughout the church, and I want to see the whole church on fire with the living Spirit of God in their midst!

Tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday!  May God rain down on us His Gifts of water (of the Word) and of fire (of the Spirit)!

Psalm 103

Praise the Lord, O my soul;

All my inmost being, praise His holy name.

Praise the Lord, O my soul,

and forget not all His benefits.

He forgives all my sins

and heals all my diseases;

he redeems my life from the pit

and crowns me with love and compassion.

He satisfies my desires with good things,

so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's.

The Lord works righteousness

and justice for all the oppressed.

He made known His ways to Moses,

his deeds to the people of Israel....

...as far as the east is from the west,

so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children,

so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

This is the faith of Israel, that which they believed and trusted, based on their experience as a people, as a nation redeemed from slavery by the hand of the Almighty.  No other nation was drawn out of bondage by such mighty deeds; nothing like this was ever foretold by the wise men of any other peoples.  Jesus was to say, "You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews (Jn. 4:22).

Jesus came to reveal to us the Face of God, so that we would know what we worship, so that we would not have to imagine or to make up our own ideas of who or what God is.  He inherited in the flesh the entire experience of the Jewish nation, and He did not negate or deny their history or their beliefs.  In fact, He brought to perfection all they believed about the Father, making it even more personal than they had dared to imagine:  I do not say that I will ask the Father on your behalf.  No, the Father himself loves you ...(Jn. 19:26-27).

Was Jesus wrong when He said the Father Himself loves us?  Were the Jews wrong to believe they had been redeemed by an Act of God?  Was Abraham wrong to have left his people and his father's house to follow the guidance of Yahweh?  Was Moses wrong in leaving the desert at the command of the Voice from the burning bush?  Were the Israelites wrong in trusting God to lead them through the wilderness to the Promised Land?  Were the Apostles wrong in laying down their lives in testimony to the faithfulness of God?  Have all the saints from the time of the Apostles been wrong in their faith in God as a Person Who Loves and who sheds His own love throughout the world in the hearts of those who know Him? 

If God is not a Person, He cannot speak, and thus He has not spoken the untold universes into existence.  Nor has He spoken to Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, the Jews, Jesus, and to the saints.  If God is not a Person, to whom do we pray when our children are ill, when hope has left us, when we need direction and guidance.  If He does not "hear the cry of the poor," then all hope is lost, and our faith is in vain.  We are among all men, to be the most pitied, for we live in delusion and despair.  If God is not a person, in whose Image and Likeness are we made?

This is my faith; this is my testimony.  For this, I would give my life. 

Grad School--"Doing the Impossible"

Yesterday I wrote that the Holy Spirit usually keeps "nagging" us, if you will, until it hits us that He is speaking to us.  When I began teaching at the Community College, as a part-time instructor, for $700.00 a class, I could not have dreamt how my life would change.  We always tend to think that our lives will remain just as they are at the moment -- and, at that moment, I was so happy to have a small, part-time job that allowed me to be home when my kids got home from school.  Of course, I was turning the one or two classes I taught into a full-time job by attending all the faculty meetings, which I did not have to do, and by working in the learning lab as much as I could, for $7.00 an hour.

Everytime I got still in prayer, something seemed to tell me to go to Graduate School and get a Master's Degree.  I brushed off that idea as "impossible:" I had gone back to work because we needed the money, with our children beginning to enter high school.  I needed to work; as little income as I was bringing it, it was better than nothing.  How on earth could I work, take care of the home, and go to Grad. School?  I could not see how it was possible. 

But the idea kept coming back, despite my "explanations" to whatever, whoever, that it could not be done. Besides, I was very happy just doing what I was doing at the moment.  I could not envision that I would want anything else. 

Finally, after about a year of saying things like,"I'm too old to start doing what someone else wants me to do (meaning writing papers, taking tests, etc.)," I got a call from a friend who I had not spoken to in about 6 years.  We had been in a prayer group together in the 70's; this was 1984.  She had had a dream about me; in the dream, I was walking on a path around a pond.  There were paths leading away from the pond.  Everytime I got to one of the paths, I would stop and look down it, shake my head and say "No," and then stay on the path I was on, circling the pond yet one more time. 

Her dream shook me to the core.  I realized then that God was telling me to go to Grad School, and I was telling Him it couldn't be done.  Years later I was to hear Fr. Harold Cohen say, "What God orders, He pays for," but at the time, I could not figure out how we were going to pay for my son's Catholic high school tuition, my college tuition, and the girls' private school tuition unless I was working.

With a great deal of trembling, I called the Grad School ENglish Dept. at UNO and spoke to the head of the department on a Friday afternoon.  He told me he would put some information in the mail for me.  On Monday, I drove to UNO and tried to register, but after talking to the registrar and asking about a hundred questions, I just could not do it; I could not write the check.  I drove home crying and telling God that I knew He wanted me to go to Grad School, but I thought it would kill me trying to cover all the bases.  I promised to go back the next day.  When I got home, the promised packet of information was waiting for me --- and, call me naive or ignorant, but I had never heard about the Graduate Assistantships offered by Graduate Schools.  Surprisingly (to me), they would pay for your tuition, your books, and provide a small living allowance too.  The allowance was less than I was making as an adjunct teacher, but not much less.

Again, I sat down and cried!  It wasn't Impossible, as I thought!  God had resources that I knew nothing about!  I just had to follow His instructions.  I called the head of the ENglish Department to thank him for sending the material so quickly and to ask whether there were any assistantships still available.  He told me that there was one opening if I could get everything submitted quickly -- but he also told me that he had not spoken to me Friday afternoon, that he had not been in the office that afternoon, and that he had not sent me any materials that afternoon.  Now I was really laughing and crying at the same time!

Now convinced that God was really directing the operation, and that His plan was to cover the bases so that I would not die in the process, I confidently sent in all my information -- and of course, got the last assistantship being offered. 

God does not always tell us HOW He's going to direct the operation when He directs us to go in a certain direction, but if He is directing us, we can be sure that He's got all the angles figured out ahead of time.  One of my favorite scriptures is from Zachariah:  Not by might, not by strength, but by My Spirit, says the LOrd of Hosts.  Our thoughts are so limited by our own resources of time, ability, and wealth, but God's thoughts are so far beyond ours that all we can do is trust Him and do whatever He tells us to do.

To Teach as Jesus Taught

Men are trying to live the Christian Life in the Light and Teaching of My three years' Mission alone.  That was never My purpose.

I came to reveal My Father, to show the God-Spirit working in man.  I taught, not that man was only to attempt to copy the Jesus of Nazareth, but that man was also to be so possessed by My Spirit, the Spirit actuating all I did, that he would be inspired as I was.

Seek to follow Me by the Power of the In-dwelling Spirit which I bequeathed to you.  This Spirit WILL guide you into all Truth.

I told my disciples that I could not tell them all, but the Spirit would guide them.  That is where My followers fail Me.  Dwell more and more upon this Spirit-Guidance, promised to all, and so little claimed.  [God Calling 2: May 21]

How can we tell when the Spirit is leading, guiding, teaching us?  How do we know we are not just "making it up?"  From my own experience, I have discovered the infinite patience of the Spirit, Who, like a wonderful teacher, does not get tired of repeating the same thing over and over until we get it.  I have also discovered that sometimes the Spirit is speaking to us, but we are not yet ready to hear what He is saying.

I started painting classes about a year ago, and as a former teacher, I am amazed at the dynamics I see in the classroom, from this side of the desk. I think every teacher should have to take a hands-on class that is totally foreign to them, to experience all the mental processes their students go through.  There is so much "mental clutter" that must be cleared away before we can truly hear the instructions being given.  For example, when the teacher is telling the class which colors we'll be using that day, my mind is often pre-occupied with something else -- I haven't quite finished setting up my easel, or I'm looking for something in my bag, or I'm trying to pry open the medium we use.  When I am finally ready to listen, I ask him to please repeat the list of colors.  A few minutes later, someone else in the class will ask him which colors we are using today.  And then, for a third time, someone else will say, "Which colors do we need?"

As a teacher, I remember thinking, "I just said that!" or "Were you listening when I explained all of that?"

As a student in an unfamiliar situation, I now realize that until we are ready to listen, until all of the mental clutter is taken care of, we hear, but we don't hear.  One of the characteristics of the Spirit's leading us into all truth is that He repeats His Words to us in different ways until we finally "hear" Him.  When we've heard the same thing for the third time, most of us will pause and start thinking about what we are hearing.

Tomorrow, I'll tell the story of how the Holy Spirit finally got me to go to Graduate School.  Today, however, I just want to point out the lesson of the day.  Every morning, I begin my prayer time by reading God Calling; then, I slowly go through Give Us This Day, a meditation book; and I end up by reading a little from the book du jour.  A few days ago, I re-discovered a book I had read some time ago and loved -- Richard Rohr's The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament.  I decided that I needed to re-read it.

So I began this morning with the passage quoted above, from God Calling 2.  It really spoke to me, as it is something I have experienced over and over for the past 35 years.  Then I went on to Give Us This Day and read this:

...the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them...(Jn. 17).

Thinking of the 11th-grade students I teach for Confirmation, I prayed that I could learn to teach as Jesus taught, that is, receiving the words given to me by the Father, teaching not from a book, but from listening to what the Spirit is saying, and passing that on.  I did not immediately connect my prayer to the quote from God Calling, but I was soon to do so. 

When I picked up the introduction to Rohr's book, the first thing I read was this:

Meditating on the passages [of the Bible] is one of the principal ways of opening our hearts and minds to the Word which speaks to us through the Scriptures, for it is the same Word which the inspired authors listened to when they composed the sacred texts....The Bible is a record of people's experience of God's self-revelation...it was written by people listening to God.

Then it hit me:  the Holy Spirit had said the same thing three times to me this morning, through three different venues.  I didn't really hear it the first time, even though I did "hear" and understand the words on the page.  I kind of heard it the second time, when I prayed to learn to teach as Jesus taught -- by listening to the words spoken by His Father.  But the third time, it was spelled out so clearly that I couldn't miss it:  we have to learn to listen to the Spirit when He speaks to us. 

That is why I have always found God's word and work such an adventure -- He is always leading, teaching, guiding, telling us which direction in which to walk.  But most of the time, He has to shout three times or more before we are finally ready to hear Him tell us "which colors to use."

Encounter with God

We have inherited, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, a wonderful gift -- the Gift of Faith.  For many people, "faith" means "creed," or "what we believe."  But that is not the tradition we have inherited.  From the time of Abraham, who is called "The Father of Faith," to this day, faith does not at all mean "what we believe," but Whom we have met. 

First comes the encounter with a living Person, a dialog which changes one's life.  Afterwards comes "what we believe" from that encounter.  Abraham, who was living in a pagan culture that worshipped the sun, moon, and stars, somehow heard the Voice of Yahweh, who told him to "leave his people and his father's house and come to a land I will show you."  Abraham had to follow that Voice.  On the way to he-knew-not-where, daily he built an altar of prayer so that he could enter into the dialog with the Voice that continued to lead him.  He expected God to speak to him, and his expectations were not disappointed.

Today, many people "believe" many things -- but they do not expect God to speak to them.  Indeed, they are even offended at the thought that the great Almighty would take notice of us.  We have creeds, but we do not have faith.

Faith is meeting God, the eternally faithful, gracious, loving, merciful God Who is willing to share with us all that He is and has.  Once we have that encounter, our faith in Him grows.  We know He is with us on the way, no matter what befalls us.  We come to expect God's action in our life.  We base our whole life on the goodness of the One Who Loves us and the knowledge that He is leading us somewhere, that our history and the history of the world has meaning.  His faithfulness to us gives us the security to let go of the past, to be insecure in the moment, and to look forward to what comes next. 

If the Scriptures do not speak to us today, it is because we have not yet met the Lord behind the Scriptures.  If God is not speaking to us today, it is because we have not yet entered into dialog with Him.  In The Great Themes of Scripture, Richard Rohr writes this:

We get what we expect from God.  When we have new ears to hear with, the Lord can speak a new word to us.  When we no longer expect anything new or anything more from God, we are like nonbelievers, atheists for all practical purposes.

In this moment, the Lord wants to speak something new to you.  Not to believe that, not to hope in that, is to have lost faith in the power of the Word of God.

How do we begin the dialog?  For some of us, it is a cry of desperation:  Help!  I need YOU!

For some, it is a quiet movement in the soul, a yearning, a hunger that opens us toward being satisfied.

For others, it is a quest:  Show me Your Face.

What we have inherited is example on top of example that God meets us where we are, that He is aware of us wherever we are, and that He is waiting to enter into our lives if we will but open the door.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone will open to Me, I will come in and sup with him, and he with Me (Rev. 3:20).

Until we are willing to open that door, God will remain to us a stranger and a foreigner, someone we have heard about but never met.  

Words to Live By

These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your hearts.  Impress them on your children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates....to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut.7:6-9; 8:3).

A few days ago, I wrote about Scripture as 'our daily bread,' something we could break off in small bites and chew on a little at a time.  Today, I saw an article online called "Engaging Students with Social and Emotional Learning."  In the section of the article called "Creating Meaning, Building Character, and Inspiring Potential," Rutgers University Professor Maurice Elias writes this:

Sir John Templeton believed that maxims contained the power to motivate and inspire people, including young people.  He created his essay concept based on this belief and it has grown to be a world-wide phenomenon of inspiration (and used to turn around disengaged urban learners).

Educators all over the world are now using the idea of having young people collect quotes that they find personally meaningful and developing the ideas in essay form centered around desirable character traits such as respect, honesty, confidence, and responsibility.  They have found that when students create their own meaning, they are more engaged in the learning process.

This "new" method introduced by Sir John Templeton is very old indeed; indeed, it is about 4000+ years old.  From the beginning, God always wanted His words written in our hearts, on our doorposts, and on our gates.  In the books of Joel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, among other places in Scripture, He promises that "on that day," He will give us a "new commandment," not written on tablets of stone, but on our hearts. 

In the wilderness, Jesus was able to turn away Satan with the Scripture written in His heart.  The words have to come to us when most needed, and the only way that can happen is if we, like Mary, have stored up "all these things" in our hearts.  Psalm 1 presents the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.  The Hebrew word translated in English as "meditates" actually means "mutters."  The one who "mutters" the law day and night is storing up the Word of God in his heart, where it can spring to the occasion when needed.  That man, according to Psalm 1, is like a tree planted near streams of water, which yields its fruit in due season and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers. 

With that man, the Psalm contrasts the "wicked," who are like chaff that the wind blows away.

I once read about a prisoner of war in a concentration camp.  Although he had not been very religious in his life, he had attended Sunday school as a child, where he learned Scripture verses and little songs like Jesus Loves Me, This I know.  Day after day, as he sat alone in his cold, dark, damp cell, he began to recite what he could remember from Scripture and to sing "Jesus Loves Me."  Those words sustained him in hope which grew stronger and more meaningful each day until his release.

In the midst of Corrie Ten Boom's experience in the concentration camp at Dachau, she conducted Bible studies with small portions of the John's Gospel which had been smuggled into the camp, despite the threat of severe punishment for doing so.  Those verses sustained the women in her bunker throughout their ordeal. 

Today, in China, I have heard that anyone found possessing a Bible will be executed, and any neighbors who know someone possesses a Bible and does not report it will also be executed.  What is it about the Bible that so enrages dictatorships?  I think Jesus' words are more true than we can imagine.  I think it is that those who have stored up Scripture in their hearts do "live," not by bread alone, but by the words of God, and they cannot be defeated.  It is difficult to subdue those who have the words of Psalm 18:2 written in their hearts:

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer;

my God, my strength, in whom I will trust;

my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

The Ascension

I have much more to say to you, but you cannot bear it now.  But when He, the Spirit of Truth arrives, He will teach you all truth.

When I was 17, I did not want to be 18.  I knew what 18 meant -- the end of high school, life as I knew it then:  boys, parties, fun, friends, school (yes, I even loved algebra; history, not so much).  I did not want to face what I knew would be ahead--taking responsibility for the next step on my own, not just "going along" with whatever teachers or friends proposed for me.  I did not want to have to think about which college to attend, how to get there, or what to study when I did get there. 

Because I had never experienced "the next step," I feared it -- and I certainly did not want to leave behind all that I had gathered up of my previous experience.  I could not let it go; it was all too precious to me!  The day of my senior prom, I had my hair done ("up," not the way I usually wore it of course), I borrowed my neighbor's expensive crystal jewelry (not something in my dresser drawer), I put on a dress that had been especially made for the occasion, and I looked in the mirror.  Suddenly, I knew -- I just knew -- that was the end of my childhood.  And I burst into tears.  I did not want the "adult" life I saw in the mirror.  I still wanted the child I had been:  carefree, no thinking about tomorrow, no stress.  If my life could have stopped that day, I would have been happy forever -- I thought.

What I could not know then was the richness of what was still to come: the depths of knowledge I would gain in college, the increased steps toward knowing God, myself, and others that I could not know in high school.  I could not then know the joy of marriage, of motherhood, of entering into a workplace where my knowledge and education and experience would become gifts to a wider world.  I could not imagine the paths the Spirit would choose for me and teach me to follow.  And today, given the choice, I would not choose the life of a high school student in exchange for my life today. 

The Ascension of Jesus, which we celebrate today, marked the end of life as the Apostles had experienced it.  I'm sure they thought they would be with Jesus for many years, until He "restored the kingdom to Israel," as they expected He would do, and until they "sat on his right and left hand," ruling in the new kingdom.  They were so excited about their expectations, now that they had found the promised Messiah of Israel. 

But their life as they knew it came to an end with the crucifixion of the Messiah.  Had they been wrong?  What now?  Could they go back to their former lives after having seen and experienced all that they had with Jesus?  How could they know then what paths the Spirit had chosen for them -- that Jesus would continue His life with them, through them, still healing the sick, still bringing the good news about redemption from sin and evil, still setting free those imprisoned by demons, abuse, neglect.....?

The Ascension into heaven was not an end, as they thought at the time, but the beginning of a whole new dimension of existence.  Jesus was going to continue to "be with them until the end of the world," but in a new way -- no longer through the body, but through His Spirit.  They could not then imagine what was still to come, any more than I could have imagined on prom night the life that was still to be held out for me. 

When God takes something away from us that was "our life," we are grief-stricken.  What we cannot imagine is what is yet to come.  Jesus told his apostles to "wait for the Gift of the Father."  It was, and is still, wonderful advice!

Our Daily Bread

...read the Bible as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before you ready-made...Face the book with a new attitude as something new...Let whatever may happen occur between yourself and it.  You do not know which of its sayings and images will overwhelm and mold you...But hold yourself open.  Do not believe anything a priori; do not disbelieve anything a prioi.  Read aloud the words written in the book in front of you; hear the word you utter and let it reach you.

--adapted from a lecture of Martin Buber, 1926

The Hebrew Bible, like most of the literature of antiquity, was meant to be read aloud.  Unfortunately, most modern translations are clunky, meant for the silent reader, not for the rhythm and sound of literature meant to be heard.  We have translated meaning, but not in way that poetry works, demanding an interactive and interpretative response from the reader.

Here is an example of what I mean:  In Chapters 32-33 of Genesis, Jacob is on his way back home after 20 years of running away from his very angry brother.  He does not know what kind of reception to expect from Esau, who was cheated out of his birthright and his father's blessing by his younger brother.  Jacob hears that Esau is on his way with four hundred men to meet his brother at the border.  Jacob begins to send ahead of him waves of peace-offerings in the form of gifts. 

The New English Bible presents Jacob's thoughts this way:

for he thought, "I will appease him with the present that I have sent on ahead, and afterwards, when I come into his presence, he will perhaps receive me kindly."  So Jacob's present went on ahead of him (vv. 21-22)

Okay, so we get the meaning.  But contrast this version that attempts to capture in English the sound of the Hebrew text based on variations of the word panim, whose basic meaning is "face:"

For he said to himself:

I will wipe the anger from his face

with the gift that goes ahead of my face;

afterward, when I see his face,

perhaps he will lift up my face!

The gift crossed over ahead of his face...

What the reader gains from this translation is significant.  First, the repetition of "face" carries implications, even in English, of "facing" or "confrontation," which occurs at crucial points in the entire book of Genesis, from the moment when God confronts Cain with these words:  Why are you so upset?  Why has your face fallen? (Gen. 4).  Later, after Cain kills his brother and again is confronted by God, he says, My iniquity is too great to be borne! Here, you drive me away from the face of the soil, and from your face I must conceal myself, I must be wavering and wandering on earth--now it must be that whoever comes upon me will kill me!

The repetition of "face"/ panim in Hebrew in the story of Jacob and Esau will call into play the story of Cain and Abel, intensifying for the reader the anxiety that Jacob must have felt in meeting again the brother he "killed" through his greed. 

Before Jacob "faces" Esau again, he must first face God.  The night before the fateful meeting, Jacob wrestles all night with an angel, who he will not release until he has received a blessing.  After his victory, the text reports: Yaakov called the name of the place Peniel/ Face of God, for I have seen God, face to face, and my life has been saved.

Once Jacob has met God "face to face," he is finally ready to face his brother and to ask forgiveness:  For I have, after all, seen your face, as one sees the face of God, and you have been gracious to me (33:10). 

What the reader gains from repetition of a keyword here is the opportunity to make connections for himself between parts of the text:  Jacob's meeting with God and the meeting with his brother.  Now, this is really food for thought, something we can chew on and digest -- our daily bread.  Clearly, there is a difference between translation what the Bible means and presenting what it says. 

A recent article by George Weigel in The Catholic Week describes his disappointment in Catholic approaches to the bible:  there is little beauty here, and the beauty of God's Word ought to be one of its most attractive attributes.  He deplores "the historical-critical method which has convinced Catholics that the bible is too complicated for ordinary people to understand, inept preaching, and reducing the Scripture to a psychology manual -- all turn-offs for Bible study."

I think Martin Buber's approach quoted at the beginning is the best one:  don't ask anything other than what we would ask from good poetry---don't begin at page one and try to plow through all the books; don't even begin at the beginning of any one book.  The Bible is not a "book;" it is a library of separate books by different authors at different times in different styles.  Even the one book of Isaiah was probably written by 3 different authors at different periods in time.  Rather, let the Bible be to you as a loaf of bread; cut off one small piece and let it nourish your soul!

All the Families of the Earth

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 

For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,

whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;

all things were created by him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church;

he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead,

so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,

and through him to reconcile to himself all things,

whether things on earth or things in heaven,

by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1: 15-20).

This morning, for some reason, I began thinking about my father's family and my mother's family.  The two cultures seem to be almost polar opposites, and yet, in me, they "hold together."  I cannot let either one of them "go," so to speak, or deny that I am a product of either line.

My father's family came to America from Sweden and Germany.  They were a breed of delicate and sensitive scholars and thinkers, deeply immersed and wedded to Old German Catholicism.  They did not question their faith, but adhered to it with every fiber of their being.  They were quietly but fiercely loyal to one another and to the families they generated, to the point of laying down their lives for their families.  My father, who loved school, dropped out at age 14 when his mother died so that he could stay home and care for his five younger siblings, one just an infant.  Had he not done so, his older sister, 16, who had just joined the convent, would have had to return home.  He never got the opportunity to return to school.  The Kuehnes suffered whatever life brought them in silence, prayed deeply, and never wavered, even in thought, from what the church taught.

My mother's family were Scotch-Irish, descendents from America's hardy pioneer stock.  They were Baptist by faith, but never took themselves or anyone else too seriously.  They weathered difficult times and kept going, always with a touch of laughter and a twinkle in their eyes.  The family joke was that one of their ancesters had sold what is today downtown Cincinatti for a mule because it was getting 'too crowded' in that area.  My mother's sisters were horrified when she married a Catholic, a heretic and a papist, an idol-worshipper (statues in the church).  They were even more convinced of her back-sliding when she converted to Catholicism, but they never let their opinions interfere with their love and laughter in one another's presence.  My aunt faithfully saw that we went to the Catholic church every Sunday the summer we spent with her on the farm.  Maybe she had to skip going to her own church that Summer; I never thought to ask her.  They, too, were staunch believers -- but they also believed in laughter, good food, and warm hospitality.

In me, both sides of the family are united; I fully embrace both strains of my inheritance and rejoice fully in what both sides have brought to my life.  I could not deny anyone on either side of the family because I know them and love them dearly.  Somehow, their beliefs and the ways they lived out those beliefs are not nearly as important to me as the strong cords of love that bind us together.

In the same way, Jesus, as the "First-born" of all creation, holds together all the families of the earth.  He knows and loves each one, not denying any of them, despite differences in culture, upbringing, and belief.

He was born in Israel, the meeting-point of three continentents -- Asia, Europe, and Africa --the cross-roads of the known world.  Medieval scholars called Israel "the naval of the earth."

He was Jewish, born into a Greek culture, inheritor of Oriental wisdom, crucified by the Roman world.  In Him, God has reconciled all of creation to Himself in love.  Nothing is alien to him; he embraces all.  The only ones He denies are those who deny Him, who refuse to be drawn by His Spirit.  Son of God, Son of Man:  in Him all things are united under God.

Standing Before God

If the Spirit of God detects anything in you that is wrong, He does not ask you to put it right:

He asks you to accept the light, and He will put it right.

A child of the light confesses instantly and stands bared before God.

--Oswald Chambers:  My Utmost for His Highest

Prayer is simply standing before the Presence of God, just as we are, not hiding our nakedness, but willing for Him to see us exactly as we are.  God saw Adam and Eve's attempt to cover themselves with fig leaves, and He provided for them the skins of animals instead.  The Hebrew account of Genesis 3 -- the fall of man-- begins with these words:  Now the snake was more cunning/ clever than all the living things of the field that God had made.  The Hebrew for "cunning/ clever/ crafty" is aruwm.  After Adam and Eve had sinned, their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked.  The Hebrew for "naked" is arowm. The deliberate play on words in Hebrew would be equivalent in English as something like "shrewd" and "nude."  Adam and Eve, created in the image and likeness of God, have seen in themselves something like the serpent -- shrewdness.  Now they are afraid of the Light of the World which will expose the very thing they wish to hide.

In every person's life, we move from innocence to something we want to cover up, something we don't want anyone else to discover about us.  We get used to hiding from God and from other people -- but the fig leaves never work very well at all.  As we become more and more filled with what is not God, what is not like God, it is harder and harder for us to be in His Presence.  We stop going to church; we no longer pray, or approach God.  We are out of alignment with Him, and He remains hidden from our eyes.  We are not comfortable in His Presence.  Soon our relationship with Him loses its freshness and authenticity; there is no longer any true encounter.  If we accept this condition as "the way things are," we allow estrangement from God to become our way of life.

There was a time in my life when I could not admit that I was a "sinner."  I wasn't perfect, of course, I had my faults -- but I, (in my own mind) was a lot better than "some people I know."  I went to church; I prayed; I tried to live a responsible life.  I could not see the essential lack in my own life, the parts that were so unlike the image of God, the places where I was damaging myself and others.  Then, one night during a prayer meeting, I saw an image of a twelve-foot wall of crumbling stones with huge words carved into the stones:  Your sins are forgiven!   At that moment, I realized, like David, that my sins were piled up higher than my head, that I was a sinner by nature.

To realize we are "sinners" means that, without the grace and guidance of God, we will never get it right!

We will always choose the wrong thing by nature, like Eve, going after what seems attractive to our eyes, but not knowing the seed of poison hidden within the shiny apple.  We need prayer; we need communion with God on a daily basis; we need wisdom and guidance.  We need our nakedness/ shrewdness to be covered with His loving kindness and strong grace.  We need Him!

Estrangement from God is no way to live.  Even if we feel exposed, we need every day to stand in His light.  As Oswald Chambers says, we don't need to "fix" ourselves; if we stand in His Presence, He will gradually transform us into His likeness.

This is All I Know

All I know is that I entered the hospital for surgery full of fears, anxieties about the future, and worries about what would happen next -- and I left full of rejoicing, hope, and thanksgiving that has not subsided for 34 years.  How can anyone explain the change in me from one moment of prayer by a 22 -year-old girl?  If that does not describe the "new birth" Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about, what does:  unless a man is born again, (or born from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God.

During our weekly Bible study, someone will occasionally wonder at the amazing spread of the early church from the Day of Pentecost.  The numbers of converts grew amazingly -- from 3000 on the Day of Pentecost, to a "daily" increase: And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

And all of the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade.  No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.  Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.  When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.  Then Peter and John placed their hands of them, and they received the Holy Spirit. 

Then the church through Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace.  It was strengthened; and [in the comfort of] the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers, living in the fear of the Lord (Acts 9:31).

The word I have translated "in the comfort of" above is paraklesis in the Greek.  It comes from the Greek parakleo, a verb that means "to call near/ to call alongside of, to invite, to invoke, to pray."  When Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, one translation of his description is The Paraclete: One Who Called Alongside of.  We know from our English "para-professional" and "para-medic" that "para" is one who is called to stand beside, to assist, to support.  Some translations of Acts 9:31 say, "with the consolation of the Holy Spirit, the church grew in numbers...." but our English "consolation" is so weak that it can hardly communicate what is really going on here. 

The early church grew in leaps and bounds by the action of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who heard and saw the words and actions of the apostles.  I love that Peter and John prayed for those who had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus, and they received the Holy Spirit. 

Yes, I (and all other Catholics and those baptized in other churches) did receive the Holy Spirit at the laying on of hands and the sacramental washing of water.  But what we did not know was that there is another "baptism," which is the infilling with the Holy Spirit for the power of ministry. In the Old Testament, priests, kings, and prophets were annointed for their role as ministers to the people, but the promise in Joel was that even "young men and handmaidens" would also be annointed with the Spirit (Joel 2:28-32).

Jesus told the apostles:  John baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5).   The apostles were presumably baptized by either John or Jesus, yet they were told not to leave Jerusalem after Jesus' Ascension into heaven, but to wait for "the Gift of the Father."  Without that Gift of the Holy Spirit, which arrived on the day of Pentecost, the Jewish Harvest Feast of the Ingathering, they had no "power:"  You will receive power (dunomis/ dynamite, in English) when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1: 8).

I know the Holy Spirit was with me from birth; I know the Holy Spirit drew me to church sometimes during recess and that He ministered to my spirit at those times; I know the Holy Spirit drew me to weekday Mass during the summer months, and that He taught me through dreams and desires.  He led me to read the lives of the Saints and to want to love God the way they did.  I know the Holy Spirit manifested His action to me when I was confirmed --- but I had no knowledge or community that knew how to teach and support a fledgling spirit. 

How gracious of God to lead me to someone not afraid to witness or to pray for me!  How great of God to lead me straight into the arms of a more knowledgeble woman and to a just-being birthed prayer group in my parish after my "born-again baptism of the Holy Spirit," to lead, guide, and teach me in the ways of the Spirit!  And immediately, while I was still in the hospital, the Word of God came alive to me; I could not stop reading it.  Like Paul, no one "taught it to me," but I received revelation directly from the Holy Spirit.

This was the experience of the early church -- they received the Holy Spirit, and He taught, directed, acted, led, annointed, and grew the church.  When the newly-formed prayer group began at St. Lawrence Church in Kenner, none of us knew "how" to lead a prayer group; we found that we were just holding onto the Holy Spirit's coattails as He acted each week, to our amazement. 

When Pope John Paul opened the Second Vatican Council in 1960, he prayed for a Second Pentecost in the church, that the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit would blow open the windows of a church grown stale.  I thank God that his prayer was answered, and that I was so privileged to be a part of that movement!  I, too, now pray that a New Pentecost would set aflame the whole world, and that all men and women would know the power and the "consolation" / comfort, power, dynamite of the Holy Spirit of God.

What is the Source of Your Energy?

Energy -- the mark of all living things.  Even music, not necessarily a living thing, emits energy.  Yesterday, as I worked at the computer, I noticed how different the background music affected me.  Some of the music energized me; some of it softened my energy and made me feel warm, peaceful, and romantic.  Some of the songs brought a feeling of nostalgia and yearning for something I couldn't even define. 

Trees, rocks, mountains, lakes -- all exert a kind of energy on the world at large as well as on us as individuals.  Cityscapes also bring their own kinds of energy--that is why many cities have begun to establish town greens, civic sculptures, and restored building, all of which help to offset the negative energies that tend to go with city life: noise, traffic, bustle, trash, over-crowding, depressing lack of color and freshness, etc. 

In the wonderful documentary called "I Am," Shadyac, the producer of films such as Bruce Almighty and Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, asks the question, "What is wrong with our world?"  The answer is "I Am."  The whole point of his film is to transform the question and answer to "What is right with our world?" / "I Am."

Every human being projects some kind of energy into the world around him.  Some human energy is renewing and refreshing, like that of nature itself.  Some people, on the other hand, emit a kind of negative energy that either drives others away, depresses the people around them, or consumes the good energy of others like a black hole in space.  Anger and seething resentment, even when masked, cannot be hidden; people sense that kind of energy and seek to get away from it.  Hostility toward others, jealousy, desire to be seen as better than others, fear of failure -- all communicate themselves toward other people, whether we wish it or not.

One of my favorite Scripture passages is Proverbs 4:23:  Guard well your heart, for out of it flow all the issues of life.  I don't think anyone can contest the absolute truth of that statement:  everything in life flows from the kind of energy stored up in the core of our personalities.  The friends or associates we make, the person we marry, the jobs we do, any of life's achievements -- all begin and depend upon the core of our being, what the Bible calls the "heart" or "spirit" of man. 

The heart is not the "soul," the part of of us the Greeks called "Psyche," or the mind and emotions.  We are much more than the contents of our minds and emotions.  There is something even deeper in us that remains even when our emotions go wild or shut down, even when our minds diminish through Altziemer's or brain damage -- we are still precious, eternal beings whose value is not lessened in the eyes of God, even if the earth sees it differently.  The Downs Syndrome child has a pure heart; the great scholar and intellect may not. 

So then, what kind of energy animates our lives?  What kind of energy do we project to the world around us?  Twenty-five or thirty years ago, Russian scientists were experimenting with different ways to increase productivity in their crops.  One team of scientists "discovered" that using perlite (I think that's right) in the soil would dramatically increase corn productivity.  In trying to replicate the experiment with other teams, no results at all could be obtained.  They sent the original team back into the field, however, and they were able to re-create the original results.  Finally, the Russians had to conclude that the corn was responding to the energy of the experimenters, not to the perlite. 

I know this sounds very "New Age," and most people will scoff at such a ridiculous theory.  However, American scientists some years ago were baffled by the results of experiments with light waves or particles (it's still hard to tell what light really is).  They consistently noted that they got different results in their experiment depending on whether observers were present in the room or not.  And Einstein himself was stunned to discover that the world did not operate entirely according to the laws of Newtonian physics.  For some years, he abandoned his research because of mysterious and unexplainable results:  "God does not play dice with the universe," he said.  Finally, another scientist brought Einstein's theories to the conclusion he himself could not accept -- what we now call "Chaos Theory."

There is no question in my mind that our spiritual energy affects the world around us.  If we are spiritually healthy, so is the world; if we are spiritually starving, so is the world.  The Lion King movie was, to me, a wonderful illustration of that truth.  And now, The Lorax has done it again.  Man indeed, does "have dominion" over the earth, as the Bible says.  What we have failed to realize is that our kingdom, our dominion, flows from our hearts:  As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.  This is not about the power of positive thinking; it is about the Source of our energy.  We ourselves do not create energy; we receive it from another source.  If we think we are the center of the universe, our enegy is sadly limited to our own resources.  But if we are willing to receive the Unlimited Energy that comes from Christ, Who receives everything from the Father, His energy in us can renew the earth.

Prayer for Healing

Someone gave me this prayer when I had lung cancer.  Probably I've put it here before, but it cannot hurt to post it again.  I find it so helpful when someone asks for prayer:

Heavenly Father, I call on you right now in a special way.  It is through your power that I was created.  Every breath I take, every morning I wake, and every moment of every hour, I live under your power.  Father, I ask you now to touch me with that same power.  For if you creted me from nothing, you can certainly re-create me.  Fill me with the healing power of your spirit.  Cast out anything that should not be in me.  Mend what is broken.  Root out any unproductive cells.  Open any blocked arteries or veins and rebuild any damaged areas.  Remove all inflammation and cleanse any infection.  Let the warmth of your healing love pass through my body to make new any unhealthy areas so that my body will function the way you created it to function.  And Father, restore me to full health in mind and body so that I may serve you the rest of my life.  I ask this through Christ, Our Lord.  Amen.

The Health of the Soul

Many years ago, when I was teaching at Delgado, my feet were hurting so badly that I thought I'd have to give up teaching.  I would bring four pairs of shoes to school and change shoes all day long, hoping to get some moments of relief from the pain.  From the time I got up in the morning to the evening, my feet were in pain, and I would get more and more tired as the day went on from fighting through pain.

One day, I was walking back to my office from the back of the campus; my feet hurt so badly that all I could think of was sitting down on the sidewalk and taking off my shoes, walking barefoot the rest of the way.  In desperation, I cried inwardly:  O God, if you tell me what to do, I promise I'll do it!

That afternoon, I stopped at my mom's house on the way home.  When I complained about my feet hurting, she said it sounded like arthritis; that's the way hers began.  I thought I was too young for arthritis, so I shrugged it off.  Then she said, "If you're craving something, it's poisoning you -- and corn is the worst!"  I thought for a moment.  About a year previously, I had stopped eating popcorn, which I craved and could not get enough of.  But after I ate it, I felt sick.  And since I had not eaten corn in a long time, I again shrugged it off.  The next morning, however, I reached into the pantry for the instant grits I had been eating morning and evening for several months; in fact, I craved them.  Suddenly, I thought: "That's corn!"

Intrigued, I started reading the health books on arthritis.  Sure enough, the nightshade vegetables topped all of the lists for causing inflammation in the body:  corn, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant.  For the next month, I eliminated all of those vegetables from my diet.  Suddenly, I could wear all of the shoes I had put into the bag for Goodwill!  As long as I stayed away from the nightshade vegetables (although corn is in everything),  I could wear shoes, and I did not ache all over with exhaustion. 

Today, I am absolutely rabid on the subject.  Whenever I encounter someone suffering from painful feet, I have to tell them my story.  Recently, I saw a woman in church who moved slowly, obviously in pain.  I suggested she stay away from the nightshade vegetables for one month and see if she noticed a difference.
I would do anything to keep one person from the pain I had experienced, even it I offended them in the process of "pushing my ideas" on them.

The same is true when it comes to the health of the soul.  When I see people living in fear, anxiety, depression, confusion, lack of peace, etc., I want to tell them about the healing waters that flow from Scripture.  Jesus told the apostles that His father "pruned" those who bear fruit so that they could bear more fruit --- You are already clean, He said, because of the word I have spoken in you (John 15:3). 

What does He "prune away" from us?  Pain!  The pain of the soul.  God does not want us living in pain.  Jesus healed bodies, but His healing of the souls of men was an even greater and more powerful work.  No one can be a healer until he himself has been healed.  Until I was healed of constant pain, I could not testify to the truth of what my mother told me.  Until Jesus touched me spiritually, I could not even know that I was walking around "sick of soul."  Now that He has spoken His word in me, and continues to heal, I need to speak the Source of Peace to the soul. 

Like Jeremiah, I know that people do not want to hear, but I must speak anyway.  He said, My yoke is light and my burden easy --- He takes our pain upon His own shoulders that we might be healed!

Why Did Jesus Come?

If we have not yet experienced the Living Presence of Jesus, our first response would probably be something like, "He came to teach us how to live."  But if we do not rely on the words of Jesus Himself, we are just shooting in the dark.  It is not our own ideas of why He came, but His words themselves that will answer the question:

John the Evangelist was a very young man when he met Jesus -- probably not more than 17 years old.  He was the "one whom Jesus loved," probably because of his youth.  He lived to be a very old man, in exile on the island of Patmos, where he had time to contemplate all that he had experienced of the Lord.  While the other apostles preached and were martyred, John prayed and wrote his Gospel and the Book of Revelation.  It was given to him to "see" and to explain what he saw of the Risen Jesus:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....through Him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.  Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God...from the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.

Jesus came to make known the Father.  In the Hebrew, to "know" is not to have ideas about, but to experience, to enter into.  Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly by entering into the life of the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

If we can imagine a three-sided pyramid, with each face representing one Person of the Trinity, eternally loving, eternally acting, eternally pouring out their life and love toward one another, we might begin to see the point.  We have to get inside the pyramid in order to experience Divine Life.  Once inside, we are swept up in the on-going motion of Love's Eternal Exchange and Energy.

No matter which "entrance" we find, as we enter, we are enveloped and instantly embraced in the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Jesus said He was the "door," the entry into this divine life:  No man comes to the Father but by me.  He came that we might also participate in this life, knowing the Father as He knows the Father, receiving from the Father all that He has to give through the Breath, the Spirit.  And returning everything without reserve to the Father in an exchange of total love. 

Jesus wanted to embrace us "that where He was, we also might be."  He wanted to place us in Him so that we might also be children of God, sharing in the same life that He Himself has in the Trinity.

It is not a matter of "being good;" it is a matter of "being in."  Can we be "good people" without Jesus?  Certainly.  That's hardly the point.  So many "bad" people, if you will, entered into the life of the Trinity through knowing Jesus before the "good" people of His time.  He even said that the sinners, the tax collectors, and the prostitutes would enter the kingdom of God before the Pharisees. 

Anyone who wants to can enter through the door.  NOthing else is required, but "believing in" (trusting) the One God has sent to gather in the lame, the halt, and the blind.  Jesus came to gather in whoever would come.  To the good thief, He said, This day, you will be with Me in Paradise.  Jesus did not "teach" the Good Thief; He simply gathered him into the kingdom of His Father.

Now here is the good news:  The kingdom of heaven is here, now, among and within us.  Today, we can enter into the Presence of God.  It's not about "being good so we can go to heaven."  Not at all.  It's just about entering through the Door into the Pyramid, where the Divine Life is breathing, living, acting, laughing, being exchanged.  Today is the day; we can enter today!

I once saw a cartoon, where Jesus was standing at the edge of Niagra Falls with a wheelbarrow.  Across the Falls was stretched a tightrope.  He was asking a young person, "Do you believe I can walk across the Falls on this rope?"  "Of course," said the youth, "YOU can do everything."  "Then Get IN," said Jesus.

All we have to do is GET IN.  He will do everything else.  If we want to know the Father of heaven and earth as Jesus knows Him, all we have to do is GET IN.  If we want the breath of the Holy Spirit in us, all we have to do is GET IN.  We don't have to have the right ideas, or the right position, or the right behavior to get in.  We just have to TRUST JESUS to get us to the other side.  He can do it; He will do it; He wants to do it; He was dying to do it.  Hop in!

Face to Face

Recently, I told someone that I despised talking on the phone.  To me, the phone is for information-exchange only, not really for deep conversation.  Yet, I think maybe that is, for most of us, the way we talk to God:  asking for something, informing Him of a situation, complaining, etc.  It is really hard to have a heart to heart flow of exchange "over the phone."  If that's all we have, I'll admit it's better than no communication at all, but it's really hard for me to feel satisfied after a conversation over the phone -- or even to get one started, for that matter.  And it's pretty obvious what kinds of communication happen over facebook and texting.

A few days ago, I heard a definition of "mysticism" as "direct experience, or reflection upon, the direct experience of God."  There is just no substitute for direct experience in person-to-person communication.

At the beginning of this week, a friend and former colleague called me, asking whether I could come to visit her in Florida.  She travels all over the world, giving talks to large groups of people, but this week she had a sudden break in her schedule.  For some reason, I just packed up the car and drove to Florida, a ten-hour drive, to see her.  On the way, I listened to a series of tapes on Francis of Assisi, a simple man who reformed the medieval church by his poverty, simplicity, and humility.  Francis was a mystic:  he experienced God directly in all of creation.  His great Canticle of Creation celebrates sun and moon, stars and sky, sea creatures and land animals, plants and everything that has life and breath.

He took literally the command of Jesus:  Go into the whole world and preach the good news to all creatures (alternately: to all creation) (Mark 16:15).  In his simplicity, Francis did not debate, argue, analyze, or question how it was to be done.  He just did it.  He preached to the birds, who stopped their chattering to listen to him; he preached to the wolf threatening the village at Gubi and came to an agreement with the wolf that if the villagers put out food for him, he would no longer threaten them or their children.  For the sake of the villagers, he put the agreement in writing in the city archives.

Francis' communication with all of creation was face-to-face, not at a distance.  He spoke to the people and things immediately in front of him, and they were charmed into submission -- even the Muslim sultan waging war against the Christians.  Francis did not "convert" the sultan, but he went as a listener to hear what the sultan had to say, and there was an exchange of spirits.  He knew he would probably be killed in the attempt, but he went anyway. 

After 12 lectures on Francis, I was so imbued with his spirit that I was ready to speak with him to all of creation.  As I watched the sunrise early in the morning, I said what I could recall of Francis' Canticle of all Creatures:  "sun and moon, bless the Lord; all you waves of the sea, bless the Lord.  Birds of the air, bless the Lord; creatures of the deep, bless the Lord....." 

And as I sang, the small birds flew in front of me; the pelicans swooped and dived for fish;  and there were dolphins dancing just off the dock underneath my window.  All of creation, it seemed, was responding to my song.  Later that morning, we visited the sunken gardens where the magic continued:  we watched the male flamingo spinning in place to impress his mate (and us, of course), and the flowers practically shouting in the display of their beauty.

My friend and I had outpourings of both grief and laughter as we celebrated together for three days.  We sweated together in the hot Florida sun as we re-constructed her small garden to give her the privacy she needed to read and pray on her condo patio.  She 'confessed' to me her loneliness and hopes for the future; she gave me my first martini and laughed at my helplessness after I drank it.  We shopped the garage sales to find items for her home, and I found a ridiculous Queen Elizabeth / Kentucky Derby kind of hat which I wore all day to embarrass her in public.  (Of course, she told all the shop-keepers and waiters that I had just gotten out of a home.)

If only we could celebrate and share all of life with our Creator, our Lover, our Friend and Companion -- not 'over the phone,' but in the midst of walking, shopping, planting, and building.  If only we could laugh and sing and shout -- and yes, get drunk in His Divine Presence on the wine of His Holy Spirit.  If we could only allow Him to summon all of creation to us in response to our song of praise!  There's just no substitute for mystical experience -- but it never happens over the phone!

A Deep Tide of Contentment

In the May issue of Give Us This Day, Father Michael Casey writes about the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and His work among us today:

According to the expression much favored in the Eastern Church, the effect of the Spirit's presence in our midst is to divinize human beings so that they become ever more fully "sharers in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).

The first way in which this task is accomplished is to inhibit those tendencies within us that are hostile to the advent of divine grace.  St. Paul give us a list of these "works of the flesh:" impurity, anger, envy, strife, and the rest (Gal. 5:20-21).  Before we become fully responsive to the Spirit's call to holiness, we must allow the Spirit to overcome our resistance so that we can begin to seek what is above, not what is earthly and temporal.

The kingdom of God is goodness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Nothing is so contrary to the presence of the Holy Spirit as sadness.  The Spirit's gift is not a frothy hallelujah gladness but a deep tide of contentment that flows beneath the surface of life....Pentecost invites us to share more fully in the life of the risen and ascended Lord by giving the Holy Spirit greater access to our thoughts, desires, and actions so that we also may be drawn more intensely into a fuller experience of God's love.

I remember in my twenties telling God He could have everything except my mind.  I thought that by surrendering my mind to Him, I would lose it and become like those wandering around not knowing who they were or where they were -- and I had a horror of that.  How stupid I was!  And how afraid of losing control of my own life! 

Looking back now, I realize that I really did not understand anything at all about God or about Jesus' words about those who lose their own lives finding it again, or about the seed falling into the ground in order to produce rich fruit.  First, God is wholly good; He brings things which are His to perfection, not destruction.  The more He "owns" something, the better -- not worse -- it grows.  The greater the divine action on us, the more -- not less -- human we become.

After my surrender to the Holy Spirit (by asking a young 20-year-old girl to pray for me to receive the 'baptism of the Spirit'), the first thing I noticed was a lessening of my habitual frustration, resentment, and anger.  One day, I noticed that my life-long quick anger had almost entirely disappered.  In its place was indeed "a deep tide of contentment," which had begun at the moment of prayer in the hospital and which continued to grow and deepen in the days ahead.  I did not want to let go of this new-found peace, the way I always seemed to let other things go that I had first been enthusiastic about.  So I asked my doctor, who had been the first to pray over me, how to make it continue.

He laughed; "You don't 'have' the Holy Spirit," he told me; "He has you! And He's not letting go, even if you walk away.  He's going to walk with you as far as it takes."  Then the doctor told me that it had been 14 years since he had received the gift of the Holy Spirit in prayer -- and he told me that it just keeps getting better and deeper every year.  I was so reassured by his words that I relaxed, somehow believing that it did not and would not depend on my efforts to continue this gift, that the Spirit Himself would take charge of my life.  That was in 1977.  Today, 35 years later, I am soooo happy to stand up and shout to the world the absolute and undeniable faithfulness of God. 

The Gift of the Holy Spirit is more real and deep to me today than it was then.  Although I have not been the faithful one, although I have sinned again and again and neglected prayer; although I have pursued other interests and ambitions, the Holy Spirit has continued to teach, to instruct, to lead, to purify and to "perfect the things which concern me," as it says in Lamentations 3: 

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness (22-23).

You came near when I called you,

and you said, "do not fear."

O Lord, you have taken up all the causes of my life;

you redeemed my life (57-58).

To the woman at the well, Jesus said, "If only you knew the Gift of God, you would ask, and I would give it to you."  I want to grab everyone I meet and say to them:  If only you knew the Gift of God, you would ask, and it would be given unto you!

(No more entries until next week; I will be traveling.)